The attitudes of public elementary school teachers and school library media specialists in three East Tennessee counties toward the instructional consultant role of the school media specialist

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not teachers and school library media specialists differ significantly in their attitudes about the role of the school library media specialist as an instructional consultant. Specifically the study examined three different dimensions of attitudes: curriculum development, instructional development, and technology use. A questionnaire was developed for this study addressing the instructional consultant role of the school library media specialist.

The population for the study consisted of teachers and school library media specialists in the Anderson, Blount, and Knox Counties of Tennessee who work in K-5 public schools. The data were analyzed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to determine if there were a significant differences in the attitudes of teachers and school library media specialists. A Pearson correlation and chi-square analysis were used to measure the strength of the relationship between attitudes and following groups of variables: (1) years of experience, (2) educational level, and (3) employment type and/or teaching specialties. An overall level of significance was set at .05.

Major conclusions, based on the findings, were the following: (1) There were no significant differences between teachers' and school library media specialists attitudes regarding the library media specialist's role in curriculum development, instructional development, and technology use. (2) There were no significant relationships in the instructional consultant role of the school library media specialists when comparing teachers' attitudes to years of work experience, educational level and teaching specialties. (3) There were no significant relationships in the instructional consultant role of the school library media specialists when comparing school library media specialists' attitudes to years of work experience, educational level and employment type.